While this was a spoof - there is a well-known incident with an RC pilot who did exactly that with the loss of a wing panel. It was remarkable. And all caught on video at an event with witnesses. There was very little damage to the model!

Seen it several times with models, Todd Bridges at the Tuscon Aerobatic shootout for one, Bill Hemphill was famous for it as well but on a full scale... no way. This is a well debunked spoof for a clothing company.

Not sure if it was true or not, but I heard that after Bill Hempel's one-winger there was a spate of pilots intentionally weakening one side of their wing tubes so they could emulate him... hopefully it wasn't true, because that would be really, really dumb.

Originally Posted by xmech2k
Ahh, but you should never underestimate the general populations ignorance! Just look at the explosive popularity of multi-rotors... errr, I mean, well you know what I mean!

Yup
That video clip made the rounds a year or three ago. Pure fabrication, it never happened. As an example, watch the so called landing. That plane came to a stop in about 5 seconds. That's pretty fast. Far faster than a full sized plane ever could.

And, look at how cleanly the wing came off in the final part of the video clip. Don't think a real plane would shear off a wing that cleanly.